All posts filed under: Designing fashion

Fashion is fickle – no doubt about that! It’s only two days ago that I made a point about how a fashion collection must have a strong and novel silhouette in order to be exciting (read more about that here) that I find myself falling in love with collections with a minimal silhouette that is very straightforward. So how can that be? Because in fashion there really aren’t any rules, and in the minute you give a guideline of how to make something work, it’s proven that it can be done otherwise. It’s anything but German grammar, where a rule is a rule – no exception. In fashion sometimes it just works, because… yeah, well, it just works. This can make fashion hard to teach, and it can make it hard to comprehend for outsiders. That’s probably also one of the reasons, why a fashion designer’s finest asset is his or her ability to see the world in a unique way and trust ones own intuition. A couple of days ago, I got really excited …

A lot of elements are important to balance, when making a fashion collection such as fabrics, silhouette, colours, details, styling and so on, and it all starts with an excellent research. A research that feels fresh and is intuitive, while also being rooted in what’s going on in the fashion world around us (read more about the two parts of fashion design here). But, more often than not, students – and sometimes also designers – struggle to understand the importance of Key Shapes and Silhouette. Without a strong and convincing Fashion Collection Silhouette, an otherwise rich and well-crafted collection tends to fall apart. Of course, the Silhouette should reflect the customer, who is more or less fashion-forward. Every fashion brand should know, who their customer is, and then each season they can add more or less trendy shapes to their basic garments, which their brand is known for. So, what makes a ‘strong’ Fashion Collection Silhouette depends on the brand essentially, as most other decisions should often come directly from the brand identity. To give …

It’s September! Fantastic, inspiring, surprising September – at least if you are into fashion. While a considerate amount of people follow the catwalk shows on pages like Vogue.com, and perhaps even share them on social media, while considering ‘could I wear that?’ (or afford that?), there’s another and more systematic and analytical task to do, if you actually study or work in fashion. That is analysing what you see, and extracting the information of inspiration and key fashion show trends ss17 that are important. Because every new season is a follow-up of the past season, which is again building on all the ones that came before. Understanding where fashion is coming from is one of the best ways to understanding, where it’s going. If you work in fashion, this is crucial for you to have a feeling about. So how to go about this analysis? I would recommend creating a folder on your desktop or alternatively a Board on Pinterest, where you can store all the looks, you find exciting. Perhaps Pinterest is a more …

One of the very bright stars on the fashion sky is Danish fashion designer Stasia. She has been around forever, which is perhaps the one key metric in measuring the success of fashion designers in an industry, where new brands see the light of day all the time, and disappear just as quickly. The longevity speaks of popularity with the customers, ability of running a business, but also what this article is going to focus on; a thorough love and passion for creating amazing products. The reason, that we at The Fashion Crowd love Stasia, is – a part from being most of us dress girls, and then it’s hard not to fall in love – because the love for fashion is evident in every choice of fabric, every colour combination, every detail and every cut. How we see it, this is fashion poetry, almost like an ode. And this is exactly what so much fashion is missing today in a fast-paced million-dollar industry. Needless to say, this is also one of the many reasons, …

During the week, I had a really inspiring conversation with an experienced academic from San Francisco working in the Fashion Design area. Among the various matters we touched upon, an interesting perspective arose on how Fashion Design – and its successful execution – is constituted by two parts. So what is good fashion design? The string of thoughts started with talking about how fashion, as a creative expression like any other art form, is rooted in intuition. Of all the designers, I’ve worked with, and myself included, design almost always originated from a feeling, intuition or conviction of what a certain object should and could look like. I’ve always experienced it as a very natural and almost immediate sense of just having that intuition. It’s hard to put a finger on more precisely what it is, but another word to use would be talent – which is actually equally intangible. This is where you find the true value of creativity, the wauw factor which a piece or collection either has or hasn’t, and the the …

The Importance of Creative Research in Fashion. All the steps in creating a fashion collection are important; the initial idea, the further development and research, the actual design process, and finishing everything into a nice product. On time, that is. And often with production causing a great deal of challenges. We have previously discussed Trends quite thoroughly, which is perhaps a kind of layer that’s added to the entire process – but especially also the initial part, when many important decisions are made. So what is this ‘Creative Fashion Research’, and why is it so extremely important? Why is it so hard to explain how to go about, when people don’t really grasp it, and why is it sometimes so hard to get inspired? FatBrides In my five years as a tutor, explaining ‘Research’, and how to do it, was by far the most difficult thing. “Use your inspiration and imagination”, “Find inspiring images and put them together in a new context” and of course the whole thing about “Primary and Secondary Research”. All these …

Practising drawing is an important thing of being a fashion designer – it’s with the pencil/mouse and colours that you express and convey your ideas. Feeling inspired to draw is fundamental, when it comes to doing beautiful work, and taking a look at the new creations from fashion week is a way of obtaining fresh inspiration for some fashion week illustrations. I did my research looking at all the fashion shows from London, Milan, Paris and New York, and these 4 styles are some of my favourites. When I attend fashion shows or scroll through them online, colour is always something that catches my eye; that and something quirky. I love things that are quirky and have an edge. Things that at first sight don’t seem to fit or just look funny together. London Fashion Week I really like Mary Katrantzou’s tactile finish and colour range. This look got my attention because of its print and kitschy-looking colour combination. I would just love to wear this coat next season! Paris Fashion Week Jacquemus is overall refreshing, …

So, a couple of weeks ago, I attended The Jaw Nut Piece fashion show by Henrik Vibskov during Cphfw aw/16. I really love his style, and he is one of my favourite Danish designers. I especially liked his graphic striped Samurai look, so I decided to use it as inspiration for fashion illustrations and do my take on the outfit. Usually when I make graphic art and illustrations, I start out by picking some cool or quirky pictures, and this Vibskov style had both. Then I put some great music on, as it really means a lot to me, when I’m being creative. I’ll listen to anything, really, but while I did this illustration, I had Pharrell on. ‘Beacuse I’m happy…’ I made this illustration in Illustrator. I had the downloaded picture of the style next to my Illustrator file on my computer screen. I drew by looking at this picture and started out by using the pencil tool to make an outline of the silhouette in a one-line style. This element is a distinct feature of the drawing, …

Why are most fashion show invitations printed in hard copy (unsustainable) and sent out by mail (old-school)? Alas, in these email days – and you do also receive many invitations by email – it is indeed elegant and something extra to receive a beautiful envelope in thick paper, with an elegant handwriting spelling out your name and a beautiful card inside. But there can be many other ways much more surprising of how to invite guests and intrigue them with new, surprising ways. Ways that will make just that invite stand out, and that will make you go ‘wauw’. In our information age, where we’re constantly being bombarded with impressions, this is the effect we’re after, because it will make us be remembered – maybe not for long, as competition is tough, but at least for a while. Check out this video below for innovative inspiration and see what you think: Do we have to say more? Great, ah? The brand Ksenia Schnaider is from the cool and trendy Kiev, and they have always had focus …

When you start working as a fashion designer, understanding how to start a research and deciding on your fashion collection inspiration can be one of the hardest things to gauge and get started with. The thing is you can be inspired by anything, which is not really any help, when you still don’t know how to go about it. But, when you start having a feel about, what’s going on in the fashion world (read more about that here), and trust your intuition, you have a pretty good chance of doing something cool and worthwhile. Later a lot of the work, you will do, will feel like something that’s coming from deep within and just has to get out. One way of getting started with understanding how other designers go about their research is comprehending, what they have actually been inspired by; their fashion collection inspiration. This is not always easy, when you see the end result, as many, perhaps even most fashion collections are puzzled together by plenty different snippets of inspiration. It’s rather …